In case you missed it, there has been some controversy in
Australia over the last few days over the issue of public breastfeeding.
A mum in Queensland was breastfeeding her baby at a public
pool while supervising her two elder children. A staff member approached her to
say that another family had complained, because they were offended by her
breastfeeding. She then asked her to move to a private area of the pool or
cover up. The mother, rightly, refused and said that this demand was illegal
discrimination. Nonetheless, the pool attendant insisted and so the mother
ended up taking her three children and leaving the pool in tears.
On Friday, a morning television show, Sunrise, decided that
it would be a great idea to debate the issue of whether breastfeeding in public
is offensive and whether the pool did the right thing. [As an aside: do we
often debate whether someone breaking the law and discriminating against
another person did the right thing? Why is this OK when it comes to
breastfeeding women?] One of the hosts of the show, David Koch (or Kochie, as
he is apparently called), expressed the opinion that the pool had done the
right thing and that if women are going to breastfeed in public then they ought
to “be classy about it.” Later on Twitter, he explained that it was “just
common courtesy” to “be disceet” when breastfeeding.
I have to admit that I have been enraged and baffled by
these comments and by the comments of the many, many Australians (both male and
female) who have come to his defence. However, an article in The Punch today
has made a couple of things clearer to me.
As far as I can tell, the argument being made for why women
ought to “be discreet” while breastfeeding in front of other people is that
breastfeeding is a “private moment between Mum and baby” unlike when those same
breasts are being publicly displayed for the male gaze. As Anthony Sharwood argued
in his disturbing defence of David Koch’s “keep it classy” comments, this
“private moment” shouldn’t be thrust into the public sphere because then it
becomes a “spectacle” - a “public exhibition of motherhood.” He goes on to
argue:
“Public breastfeeding has become, for some Mums, the last frontier of showy parenthood. What started as a private, intimate thing has become its exact opposite. … Women can breastfeed in public in western societies. Hooray for them. Now maybe we can just wind this thing back a notch and think of the rest of us.”
Despite his absurd and highly offensive accusations that women
deliberately make a public spectacle of themselves by “flopping their boob”
out in public, Sharwood, like Koch, never actually dares to articulate why us
breastfeeding mothers need to “think of the rest of [them].”
What is it about witnessing
a breastfeeding pair that is so offensive to these people that it needs to be
keep out of their sight?
What I think it is interesting is that Sharwood is very clear that this is not about the so-called “male gaze.” He is not offended because he views
these breastfeeding breasts as sexual objects. In fact, as he proudly states
several times in the opening paragraphs to his ‘article,’ he loves ogling at
sexualised breasts. They are great. (Phwoar yeah, bring it on baby.) No, it
would appear that the issue is precisely the opposite; these breastfeeding breasts
that are apparently being thrust in his face (or, as he charmingly describes,
flopped on to the dinner table) are not available to the male gaze. They are
private breasts and shouldn’t be out in public.
It was here for me that this whole debate took on a disturbing
level of clarity. You see, according to Sharwood (and his ilk), mothering is an
‘intimate’ and ‘private’ activity that should not be taking place in the public
sphere. If somehow it does stray into that public sphere then it really ought
to be careful not to become “a public spectacle.” This means that if for some reason a mother
of young children does have to leave the house (which, by implication, is a
transgresssive act in itself), then she should take every measure to ensure
that her ‘private, intimate’ work of mothering young children does not take
up public space, because it does not belong.
The public sphere is the world of men and people who can act
like men; wage-earning, independent, unencumbered adults who pay their own way,
speak the language of adults, move in adult ways and (crucially) obey the
unwritten rules of the public sphere. This public sphere, and its unwritten
rules, was created for men when women did stay at home and did do their
“private, intimate” work of mothering in the private sphere.
We like to think that feminism has created a more equal
society – one in which men and women are both welcome in the public sphere; in
which both men and women’s issues are relevant to the public sphere. However,
if you scratch a little deeper, it becomes clear that liberal feminism has
only taken us so far. Women now have the right to join the public sphere, but
the rules have not been significantly changed. The rules that were designed for men may have
been slightly loosened so that women can obey them, but only if they unencumber
themselves of their overt femininity.
Acts of overt femininity, particularly those involving small
children, are still in clear breach of the rules. Breastfeeding is offensive
because it thrusts the act of mothering into the public sphere. This is problematic, because not only can
men not breastfeed, but they are also not parties to the act. Display your
breasts for the “male gaze” and you are participating appropriately in the
public sphere, because men are part of the transaction. They are, however,
explicitly absent from the transaction of breastfeeding and that is precisely
the problem. Ergo it is a private, intimate act between two creatures of the
private sphere and if you dare to bring it into the male, public sphere then
you had bloody well better be discreet about it.
I have been wondering for days now what “discreet” even
means in the context of public breastfeeding. I now realise that what it means is that the woman in question must show through her body language that she
knows that she is in breach of the rules of the public sphere. The specific
position of her body, or her cover, is not really the issue. The issue is the
body language of apology (I think the code word being used is modesty). She
needs to show that she is sorry for taking up public space with her private
activity. Then it would be OK. Then she could be excused.
Being proud or even nonplussed about breastfeeding our
babies is an issue, not because we are being public exhibitionists, but because
we are (even if we didn’t realise it) openly challenging the rules of the
public sphere. We are being unapologetically, overtly female it what is still,
essentially, a male space. That is what is so offensive – the brazen
transgression of these long-standing, unwritten rules.
[As a final aside, it has also dawned on me that this is probably
also at the heart of the ‘debate’ over whether small children should be allowed
to be children in cafés, restaurants, etc… and why so-called “mommy blogging”
is the object of such derision.]
